“A conference was held among the Russians, and it was decided to press south along the coastline toward where another expedition was thought to be due to land. Unbeknownst to the Russians, however, their every step of the way was being dogged by several hundred natives hidden in the forest and bent upon avenging the Quillayutes. This revenge reached fruition on the banks of the River Hoh when the Russian party was forced to split itself into three groups in order to ford the river by canoe. The women—three Aleuts plus Anna Petrovna—rode in the first canoe. When it reached shore, the natives emerged from the forest and began hurling spears. The other two canoes were sunk. The women, including Anna Petrovna, were taken prisoner. The natives then vanished into the forest as swiftly and silently as they had emerged.
“One can only speculate upon the dread and horror experienced by the young groom Bulygin. What hideous thoughts of rape and degradation must surely have filled his head. In any event, in grief and shock he voluntarily relinquished command of the expedition to one Tarakanov, a soldier and adventurer, and it was Tarakanov who wisely rejected all immediate attempts by the natives to bargain for Anna Petrovna’s freedom in return for the Russians’ own muskets. It is recorded that on one occasion Anna Petrovna was actually produced in the flesh so that her husband could verify that she was not dead. Some say that Bulygin then broke down completely and went out of his mind for a while. Whatever the circumstances, Tarakanov soon ordered the expedition upriver away from the ocean and its winter storms. The surviving Russians did not reemerge for another ten weeks. By the time they did, Anna Petrovna had been sold as tribute to the chieftain of the Makahs, a tribe living on the shores of the strait to the north.
“At Bulygin’s pleading, Tarakanov finally agreed to go north and parlay with the Makahs. Anna Petrovna soon appeared. She was clean, warmly garbed, and plainly well fed. It was obvious to all that she had become, with her blond hair and blue eyes, a particular favorite of the old Makah chieftain. Nevertheless her first words still deeply shocked all who heard them, most especially her young husband. For it was Anna Petrovna’s strong desire to remain among the Makahs until rescue could be arranged. She further suggested that all of them, including her husband, give themselves over to the Makahs for safekeeping. In the end only four members of the expedition agreed, including both Tarakanov and poor Bulygin, who clearly would hesitate at no degradation in order to remain near his lovely and vital wife. The others turned back south, but within days their boat struck a rock and sank, and all of them were captured by Quillayutes and sold into slavery. A goodly number, in fact, soon ended up among the Makahs reunited with their former comrades.
“Time passed. Spring coursed into summer, summer into fall. No rescue ships were sighted. The Makahs grew bored with their white prisoners. Many were sold and some sold again. Even the old Makah chieftain grew weary of Anna Petrovna’s charms and gave her over to a nearby tribe, where she was less well treated and often forced to eat rotten fish. According to one account, she was made to copulate publicly with two men at a time, one in her anus. Her husband may well have witnessed this. She grew forlorn. Her blond hair fell from her scalp in clumps. Her blue eyes misted over. She wept without restraint. It is known that Bulygin on several occasions threatened to kill her and once had to be physically subdued by Tarakanov. A sign appeared in the sky—a naked woman astride a stallion. On the night of November 1, 1809, of Christ’s reign, Anna Petrovna took her own life. Five days later Bulygin died of apparently natural causes.
“It wasn’t until the following spring, in fact, that a Russian trading vessel at last appeared like a beacon from heaven through the gray mists of the strait. The captain soon arranged for the rescue of the remaining prisoners by bartering with the natives. On June 9, 1810, the survivors reached New Archangel. Of the twenty who had originally sailed, seven were known to be dead, and one, a young student named Kotelnikov, could never be located.”
“So why do you tell me all this?” Trotsky says.
“You did not find it an interesting tale?” Redburn asks.
“Interesting, yes, but pointless.” Past the windshield rain pours effortlessly from the sky.
“Not if one also thinks of the man known as Colombo.”
“Who?”
“The Genoan navigator who in 1492 first reached the eastern shores of these lands.”
“Has this been verified? It is new information to me.”
“The verification in the form of navigation charts and a travel diary is sufficient to satisfy most scholars.”
“Then you are claiming that it is this Colombo, not Bering, who truly discovered the New Lands?”
“For factual purposes, yes. But since Colombo was tortured and killed shortly after his return and further such voyages prohibited by papal edict, his discovery had no practical effect.”
“So why was he killed?”
“Like yourself, he was a Jew.”
“You said he was Genoan.”
“He was apparently a Genoan Jew. The minions of Pope Boniface did not torture and kill Genoans who were merely Genoans.”
“And so, what is your point?” Trotsky asks. Outside, the storm has worsened. He can see nothing through the windshield but darkness. The landscape beyond is a hidden, unknown country.
“So if Colombo’s voyage had been permitted to stand and others had followed, it would have been the westerners from Spain and Portugal and perhaps even the backward, primitive English before their papal conquest who would have colonized the New Lands.”
“But they didn’t.”
“No, they didn’t.”
“And I still fail to understand the connection with your tale of Anna Petrovna.”
Redburn at the wheel shrugs. “Because she was raped and degraded, friend Trotsky. By my own people. We natives of the New Lands. Had it been the other way, had it been Colombo with the weight of all civilized Europe behind him who first occupied these lands, it would have been my people who would have become intimate with rape and degradation.”
“And the Germans now?” says Trotsky.
Redburn frowns, tight-lipped. He nods slowly. “Then you do comprehend my meaning, friend Trotsky.”
“I do?”
He turns his head to the side window. “This is a land without pity or remorse.”
The rain falls relentlessly.
Four: The Killing Ground
A clearing in the forest. Pine needles like a carpet on the ground. Cones scattered everywhere. Everything wet and soaked and damp and clammy. A pervasive mildew stink like an open grave. This forest is a place where nothing seems to be wholly alive, thinks Trotsky, where everything seems to be either dead or dying. Redburn and his fucking smelly cigar. Blood caked on his knuckles too. (Does the man ever wash?) And poor Trotsky, swallowing hard, shivering like a fallen angel, thinking again of warm Moscow nights when both life and youth burned with infernal heat.
He kneels in front of the three shallow graves, hand on chin, concentrating.
—Well, well, sez Redburn stepping up from behind, hovering like a huge fat bird, is there anything else ye wish to eyeball, friend Trotsky? For there below ye were first put to rest the sad rotting remnants of that frail innocent, struck down in the rawness of infancy by the man-beast Karamazov. Do ye not smell the smell of sin here as we stand, friend Trotsky? Does not the place reek of the foul deed done?
Trotsky comes to his feet, unconvinced. He shakes his head, spreads his arms, turning. —Thats still no proof, sez he, that Karamazov was the killer.
—Oh slugshit, sez Redburn. Thats no rub even if rub is what ye seek. (Nodding sagely to himself.) For who else, sweet friend? Tell me that if tell me something ye must. If not Karamazov, then who the fuck else? For to be a true killing the dreadful deed must also have its true killer, correct? And that, say I, is yon Karamazov. Him is the one that done the deed as surely as it makes no good sense to piss in a strong wind. So hang him by the tip of his prick, I say. Hang him till his balls pop out of the
ir sack like peanuts from a shell.
A steady drizzle descends like a blanket. Trotsky draws his coat collar high around his throat but the wet oozes through. Again he has forgotten a hat. He feels as if he will never again in his life know dryness—or warmth. As a baby rocked in the arms of its mother. The smothering heat. The taste of breast milk sweet upon the lips and tongue. None of this ever again—never.
He meets Redburn’s gaze firmly. —I need to visit the Skokomish village. This chieftain Meekla—I wish to meet and converse with him.
Redburn spits tobacco on the ground. —Ah, ye do, do ye? And concerning what matters, may I beg to inquire, me being the chief police official hereabouts and don’t ye soon forget it?
—About Karamazov of course. What hes been up to hereabouts. And his preaching—its precise nature. I feel I need to know more about that.
—The ravings of a Christ-addled lunatic, I’m certain. (Huffily.)
—That will be for me to decide. (Stiffly.)
Redburn spits again. —Then come along if come ye must, mere mortal fool.
Redburn leads the way along a twisting forest path. Long loping strides, great coat billowing and flapping around his legs. Beneath the sheltering umbrella of massed firs the rain eases to a gentle trickle. Trotsky, taking long deep, languorous draughts of air, follows at a more sedate pace. He is suddenly convinced of Karamazov’s innocence, that the true solution to the mystery lies within the confines of the Skokomish village. He is reminded as he walks of what the world must have been like at the moment when life first burst upon the earth. Perhaps it’s the all-encompassing wetness of everything, the pervasive dampness that turns his thoughts in such directions.
Ahead drumbeats reverberate. Trotsky hears a piercing animal-like scream.
Redburn, oblivious of everything else, enunciates a theory of the cosmos: —I call it Christ-addled lunacy because you see friend Trotsky there is no God in this universe that you and I presently inhabit. Not a one. Oh there was once upon a time don’t get me wrong Im no moronic atheist like yourself. But He ain’t here now brother. Hes done gone and been slain murdered killed snookered bumped off demised by a dagger in the hand of the devil driven through His once beating heart. How did it come to occur? you may well ask. I say it occurred when mankind distracted Him with a deed so foul and dreadful that He was set back rocking on His godly heels and the devil took advantage of the instant and plunged in the blade and that was the end of that. If I had to pick a time and place it would be papal Rome the late afternoon of November 15 1486 when good Pope Innocent VIII was assassinated poisoned by the lunatic pretender who became Boniface X and instituted the Reign of Ignorance and Dread the effects of which we still suffer today for example in the New Lands to our east where the Germans are said to be plying their own policy of mass extermination doing to my people what Boniface did to your Jews four hundred years previous when he ordered the slaughter of the heathen.
—None of this has been proved, Trotsky says. Not about the Germans anyway.
—What I need from you, Redburn persists, is to conceive of the universe in a different manner. (The drumbeats grow steadily louder. There is another piercing scream.) Let us harken back to the critical instant of which we spoke and alter history as to how it might have been had God not been murdered. There is no slaughter of the Jews, no edicts of ignorance. The voyages of exploration begun under Prince Henry are allowed to continue. We have already discussed your brother Colombo and his initial discovery. The New Lands will soon be occupied by white Christian Europeans. From shore to shore, sea to sea. There will be no mass slaughter of anyone except we poor native peoples. And all of this simply because your God in whom you say you do not believe lives instead of dies.
—For God’s sake what are you talking about? Trotsky bursts out, his patience at an end.
—Karamazov’s lunatic preaching, Redburn says. You wanted to hear it. Well, now you have.
He stops, parting the foliage. The Skokomish village. Movement among the trees. Bronzed, naked bodies. Chanting fills the air. Drumbeats. A scream. Banshee howls. The ground itself seems to quake.
Redburn plunges ahead: —So to me it all seems to come down to this one past instant in our shared history when everything of life was transformed into something reeking of death, when God Our Father…
Dread clings to Trotsky like an odor. Time stops and starts like a man’s breathing. The natives gather in a wide circle. Faces bathed in red paint. Drumbeats. Chanting. A shape at the center of the circle.
Redburn clutches Trotsky’s shoulder to pull him back. He shouts something in his ear. Unhearing, Trotsky breaks free, lunging ahead. Into the circle of red men. Through it. And beyond. At the center a naked priest, a shaman. Legs parted. Face painted. Head flung back. Hair coated in something slick and oily. Glistening. In his hands there is a knife.
And the baby oh my God the baby at his feet on the ground oh my God who is dead who its with its with its…
Trotsky feels the earth rushing up to meet him. There is a gunshot. Redburn? Then a blow behind the ear. Then darkness.
(And the baby with its heart cut out and still beating in the hands of the priest who is smiling, laughing, smiling, eating….)
Five: German Lands
In his inn in Sealth Trotsky is visited by his fellow investigator, Chekhov, a former physician. It was Chekhov who controlled Trotsky’s activities during the period when Trotsky infiltrated (and thus helped destroy) the nascent democratic movement of anticzarist Leninists. Chekhov is a man of sixty, with the sallow unlined complexion of a man thirty years younger. His hair is shoulder length and snow white, his thin hooded eyes albino pink. Chekhov has only lately returned from a surreptitious sojourn through the German occupied lands to the east. During most of this time he lived among the nomadic natives of the plains.
He smokes one brown-paper cigarette after another.
“I saw aeroplanes,” Chekhov says in a hushed expressionless voice, “come sweeping across the landscape like a plague of locusts. Aeroplanes with two wings, one on top of the other, plowing furrows through the sky. The pilots would fly their ships down close above the heads of the native horsemen and then spray them with machine-gun bullets like a covering blanket. In this fashion I saw as many as one thousand brave men slaughtered in a single afternoon. And then the tanks like mechanized insects would come rolling across the plain. Perhaps fifty tanks all in a row driving unhindered across the featureless flatness of the land.
And the women and children would rush from their lodgings, fleeing ahead of the tanks. But it was only a question of time. Between the aeroplanes and the tanks death was as inevitable as the air one breathes.
For tanks and aeroplanes are machines made by the hand of man and a machine never needs to pause and rest, a machine never needs to eat or drink. A machine cannot feel or laugh or know sorrow or pity or dread or love. But a machine can kill without thought. And so it was in the German lands. I saw children of no more than six or seven crushed under the treads of the giant tanks. I saw beautiful maidens, their bronzed bodies ripped into ribbons by machine-gun fire. I saw men as old as the wind fall to their knees and die with their eyes open.”
Trotsky, his mouth parched, lips dry, hands quivering, examines the photographs Chekhov has made. These photographs, many of them as clear and bright and beautiful as a lake, depict everything: there can be no doubt of the absolute verity of Chekhov’s tale.
Chekhov plucks the photographs from Trotsky’s hand and puts them away. “They will never, of course, leave the ministry,” he says.
“No?” says Trotsky, his head cocked at an awkward angle.
“The Germans are our fellow Christians. We cannot aid the native heathen over them.”
“But heathens are human too,” Trotsky explodes.
“Perhaps. But that is not the point, Leon.”
Trotsky crosses to the window, peering out. It has ceased raining, and the black, winding street below illuminated by the fra
il glow of gas lanterns lies silent and motionless like the body of a slumbering snake. He says, “A man told me something interesting today, Anton. A native heathen. He said to me, “What if our universe, this one that we all inhabit, what if it turned out to be a universe in which God had died years ago?’”
“A god cannot die.”
“How can we be sure?”
“I thought you were an atheist.”
“I am. But the suffering in this world, the agony … Who else can one blame if not God?”
“Try man.”
“But we are God’s creations.”
Chekhov shrugs. “But tell me of your own case. I hear it is solved.”
Trotsky turns from the window. “Who told you?”
“This native police official, the one with the theory of the cosmos. Redburn, I believe he said his name was. Why? Did he lie?”
“The murderer,” says Trotsky, “was a man named Karamazov. He kidnapped the baby of the German ambassador and cut out its heart while it was still living. He may well have eaten the heart as well. He will be returned to Moscow and hanged there for the horrible crime he has committed.”
“He has confessed, then?”
“Not yet, no. But he soon shall.”
Six: An Epiphany in the Snow
After Chekhov has departed, Trotsky stands at the window, facing out. There is a rapping on the door behind. Without turning he bades the caller to enter.
It is Redburn. He stands in the open door, coat open, cigar in his teeth. “I have come at once, Investigator Trotsky, to report a great tragedy. Only moments ago at the township jail the prisoner Karamazov took his own life. Both wrists and his throat were slit open and the blood of life drained out. How he obtained the knife he used will be the subject of further investigation.”
“And before?” says Trotsky.
“And before his dreadful act,” Redburn continues, “Karamazov had written in his own hand a thorough and complete confession to all his crimes. A copy of this confession is available for your personal perusal if you wish.”
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